Smut peddler fined for violating pact with Sands

Tuesday, June 29, 1999 | 11:15 a.m.

An owner of a company that distributed fliers for outcall entertainment businesses was held in contempt of court and fined $10,000 Monday for again having his employees pass out the literature in front of the Venetian hotel-casino.

Jaime Romero had signed an agreement in 1996, when what is now the Venetian was the site of the Sands hotel-casino, not to distribute the fliers on what a district judge had ruled was a private sidewalk.

Federal courts, however, have since ruled that even the privately owned sidewalks on the Strip are public rights of way and distributors are again in business, ACLU attorney Allen Lichtenstein said.

Because the resorts disagree with those decisions, the hotels are again going to state courts to seek favorable rulings, the ACLU attorney said.

"You can't do that and the federal courts ultimately will say that," Lichtenstein said.

While the Venetian is claiming a victory, Lichtenstein said the Romero case only deals with the narrow issue of the agreement and not the broader issue of sidewalk access.

He suggested that the legality of the agreement might be challenged because it was based on a state court decision that was contradicted by a federal court ruling permitting liberal access to sidewalks.

The resorts and county officials have been feuding with the smut peddlers for years amid complaints that tourists are aggressively accosted and discarded fliers litter the streets and sidewalks.

County commissioners passed an ordinance limiting distributors, but the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals ruled the ordinance was unconstitutional. The ordinance was amended, but attorneys for the distributors and the ACLU are challenging the new ordinance and the county has agreed to put off enforcement until a ruling is handed down.

In a statement, Venetian officials praised Monday's punishment of Romero.

"We believe that anything that gets smut peddlers off of the streets is a good thing for the community and the industry as a whole," the resort said.